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Monday, January 30, 2017

Joshua 14

I am not sure that Caleb is high on my list of heroes. See the next chapter from last December. His resolute faith is noted, but the degree of its attractiveness is muted by the bartering of his daughter. I hope moderns, at least in the so called western world, do not desire a return to such an ownership model of human relationships. Not everything that is Biblical is desirable or even good. Distinguishing good and evil is a part of our calling.

Perhaps it is significant that Caleb seeks preferential treatment for his chosen hill from Joshua, rehearsing his claim to Joshua perhaps against the lot falling to anyone else. It was a political move not exactly according to lot, but according to obligation. Perhaps he was a strongman, a manipulator, and one who had learned by force to get his own way. Not unlike many today, some more subtly than others. I note that while the land had some rest from war, it was temporary as usual.

The Prince of Peace does not play the card of moral force, nor the card of I'm right and you're wrong, not the card of physical force. Does he have any cards? Yes: the care of others, the preference for the poor and dispossessed, and the card of unintended consequences. Where's my Tarot pack?

I do not resolve ambiguity with my reading. What is quiet from war? Who conquered whom - see the next chapter? Were they quiet because everyone was dead or dispossessed? Was the land then productive? It seems Caleb dispossessed Arba (4) and his children. Maybe they made a deal after extensive slaughter. The word is not rest (נוה, from which Noah), but quiet (שׁטק, no-one famous by that name that I am aware of). Admittedly one could mean the same as the other.

And these are what the children of Israel inherited in the land of Canaan,
that Eleazar the priest had them inherit, (and Joshua child of Nun, and the first parents of the branches of the children of Israel).

Because the children of Joseph were two branches Manasseh and Ephraim,
so they gave no share to the Levites in the land except their cities for settlement and their outlands for their livestock and for their acquisitions.

And the children of Judah made overture to Joshua in Gilgal, and Caleb, child of Jepunah the Qenizite, said to him,
You yourself know the thing that Yahweh spoke to Moses, the man of God, over my agency and over your agency in Qadesh-Barnea.

And Moses swore in that day, saying, Without fail, the land on which your foot finds its way, to you will be for an inheritance, and to your children for evermore,
because you fully followed after Yahweh my God.

And now behold, Yahweh has kept me alive as he spoke these forty five years, ever since Yahweh spoke this word to Moses when Israel walked in the wilderness,
and now behold I am today a child of eighty five years.

And now give me this mount that Yahweh spoke of in that day,
for yourself, you heard in that day that the Anaqim were there and great enclosed cities. Maybe Yahweh is with me, and I will dispossess them as Yahweh spoke.